Salman Rushdie has revealed that he is "locked in a Scrabble deathmatch series" with Kylie Minogue on his new Twitter account.

Rushdie joined Twitter late last week, forced to tweet under the handle@SalmanRushdie1 after another user snaffled SalmanRushdie. "Who are you? why are you pretending to be me? Release this username. You are a phoney. All followers please note," Rushdie wrote.

He quickly began to pick up followers, but the web was initially uncertain whether to believe that the Booker prize-winning author was really on the micro-blogging site. "Testing to see if it's really you. Name the 2 musical performers who played @ the NYC launch party for LUKA," wrote @KimberlyBurnsPR. "Angela McCluskey and the Little Death, so there!" replied Rushdie. "Where did Faiz hide from a mob in 1947?" asked Time journalist @OmarWaraich. "Under my aunt Begum Majeed Malik's carpet, in her cellar in Karachi. Now stop it everyone. It's becoming dull," replied the author, who this morning changed his status to "Today we move on from ontological questions. As Popeye the Sailor Man said, I yam what I yam and that's all that I yam."